[VIDEO] Are Ad Blockers Immoral?

[VIDEO] Are Ad Blockers Immoral?

The video below is a well-balanced look at an important question that anyone who uses adblockers faces – “is it immoral to use them?”

There is a better solution, which I’ll offer below, but the morality and ethics of using an adblocker is something anyone who uses them need to consider as doing so has what might not otherwise be considered – the farther reaching implications.

While we utilize these tools in order to overcome the increasingly intrusive, invasive and irrelevant nature of online advertising, this also hurts the bottom line of most of the smaller sites that use these ads as a form of income.

The question in these cases, is whether there is a clear and informed consent being issued where a visitor is clearly aware and approving of the site “renting” their attention in order to make money. While we apathetically and unwittingly sign our value and privacy away by clicking “I Agree” to the Terms of Use that larger platforms obfuscate our rights behind, we have thus granted them our time, attention and data as a resource for them to make money.

This is a luxury the smaller sites don’t immediately have, as you are there just to read the free content they put out on the web – why should you have to be inconvenienced by intrusive ads if they are putting their stuff out there for free?

The problem this raises, is that it reduces a lot of the more creative and honest content that could potentially be offered but it is not worth the time and effort of the contributor or curator if there is not a sufficient enough payoff for them.

An addition issue to consider are some of the alternatives that are being offered by the players who people are trying to block most, namely Google. With the most recent version of Google Chrome offering “ad filtering” it still allows for the ads on Google owned sites to come through – without the user’s knowledge of what’s happening.

Isn’t that immoral and unethical?

A Better Solution

A better solution is a place where consumers can truly own their personal data. There they’ll have privacy controls that all platforms, apps and advertisers they interact with have to abide by. They can also get paid to engage directly with advertisers who are better matched to them through insights that machine learning and AI can produce – all because the person has taken control of their data, creating a much richer dataset that the AI can produce insights from (eliminating the need for anyone to actually “see” their data, protecting their privacy). Like it is here at MiDATA.io.

But until people actually do start taking control of their data, we have to consider the implications of utilizing the tools that help protect us from the intrusive state of things as they are now.

The current Permission Based Marketing model:
Built on a mostly broken all-or-nothing consent model, utilizing invasive and interruptive forms of consumer engagement, are increasingly frustrating consumers and also becoming less effective for brands.Most Interested in This TopicVery InterestedNeutralNot Interested

The emerging Privacy-First Marketing model:
Based on consumers owning their personal data and controlling access to their data and indeed themselves, through a layer of privacy settings that can effectively signal their brand interest and purchase intent, and invite brands to engage them, would allow brands to target consumers on the basis of their aggregated personal data and access them through those privacy settings, with welcomed and highly relevant forms of
consumer engagement.Most Interested in This TopicVery InterestedNeutralNot Interested

The "Hide & Seek" problem:
There is growing consumer concern about the privacy and security of their personal data, compounded by their increasing fatigue and frustration from being tracked, targeted and retargeted with invasive and interruptive ads. As a result, consumers are increasingly hiding from advertising by blocking, avoiding and ignoring. Hiding consumers are harder and more costly for seeking brands to find. Compounded by the costs of digital ad fraud, this leads to inefficiency, waste and erodes ROI.Most Interested in This TopicVery InterestedNeutralNot Interested

The emerging Personal Data Ownership industry:
Consumers are beginning to realize that their data has value, but are frustrated that everyone but them (EG. Facebook, Google) are making all the money. This happens because laws haven't adequately protected consumers' privacy nor their ownership of their personal data.Most Interested in This TopicVery InterestedNeutralNot Interested

The changing Regulatory Environment:
Beginning with the EU's GDPR and followed by California's CCPA, regulators are stepping in to protect consumers with new rights making marketers' jobs even harder through existing Permission Based Marketing platforms and tools. For example, the CCPA gives consumers rights to transparency about data collection, to be forgotten, to data portability, to opt out of having their data sold and to not be discriminated against for exercising their privacy rights.Most Interested in This TopicVery InterestedNeutralNot Interested

Other Topics?
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